The one thing that many homeowners will agree upon is that energy prices seem to be constantly heading in one direction only, with prices steadily increasing over the last few years and no signs of a reversal in the trend.

When you consider that the average price rise for electricity has been somewhere around 30% over the last three years, it soon becomes clear that you need to adopt some savings strategies to keep a lid on the costs.

Shop around

Suppliers like Blue Star Energy offer a variety of different tariffs and it makes a lot of sense to practice consumer power and shop around to see if you can lower the amount you pay by switching to a new supplier.

Compare the various energy plans and see if the amount that you are paying per kilowatt hour is more than it could be.

Banish energy inefficiency

Take a look around your house and see if you can identify some guilty power guzzling appliances that you could do without or need updated to a more efficient model.

One of the quickest ways of cutting your electricity bill is to replace any remaining incandescent bulbs that you have in your home with much more efficient compact fluorescent lights. After you have done that, take a look at any old appliances that you are running and see how many energy rating stars they have, if at all.

Some of the most power-hungry appliances are washing machines, clothes dryers, refrigerators and plasma TV’s. If you have an old fridge that you use specifically for storing your beer in for example, if you replace with a new model with a much higher energy rating, you might even be able to afford to put a few more beers in the fridge rather than paying more for your electricity.

Hot water settings

How much you pay for your hot water in the house can account for as much as one third of your total power usage in a twelve month period, so you can make some serious savings if you target this area of electricity consumption.

If you are currently on a single or peak rate tariff for your electric hot water, try to see if you can switch to an off-peak hard wired electric hot water system. Adjusting the thermostat setting can also make quite a substantial difference to costs without being that noticeable.

A minor adjustment where you reduce the temperature setting by just five degrees can make a noticeable difference to your energy bills but do remember that a minimum of 60 degrees Celsius is recommended, in order to prevent bacteria from building up in your system.

Change your habits

Saving money on your energy bills is not all about sweeping changes. Very often, lots of small changes in your expensive or wasteful habits can add up to some very worthwhile savings.

Many of us are guilty of leaving appliances like the DVD player and our phone chargers on standby but leaving them plugged in can very easily add up to as much as 10% of your energy bill overall when you add them all together.

These small strategies can add up to big savings and with energy bills seemingly still on the rise, you have to do what you can to keep your household costs under control.